Constant mean curvature hypersurfaces condensing on a submanifold (Q2509103): Difference between revisions

Constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces in a compact Riemannian manifold \((M^{m+1},g)\) constitute an important class of submanifolds. In the reviewed paper the authors investigate degenerating families of such submanifolds which condense to a submanifold \(K^k\subset M^{m+1}\) of codimension greater than 1. It is known that the mean curvatures of the elements of a condensing family of CMC hypersurfaces must tend to infinity and under fairly mild geometric assumptions the existence of such a family implies that \(K\) is minimal. Let \(K^k\) be a closed (embedded or immersed) submanifold in \(M^{m+1}\), \(1\leqslant k\leqslant m-1\). The set \[ \overline S_\rho =\{q\in M^{m+1}: \text{dist}_g(q,K)=\rho\} \] is said to be the geodesic tube of radius \(\rho\) about \(K\). This is a smooth (immersed) hypersurface provided \(\rho\) is smaller than the radius of curvature of \(K\). The mean curvature \(H(\overline S_\rho)\) at any point of this tube satisfies \[ H(\overline S_\rho)=\frac{n-1}{m}\,\rho^{-1}+\mathcal O(1)\quad \text{as}\;\rho\searrow 0,\;n=m+1-k. \] Moreover, when \(K\) is minimal one obtains the finer estimate \[ H(\overline S_\rho)=\frac{n-1}{m}\,\rho^{-1}+\mathcal O(\rho)\,. \] The main result of the reviewed paper is the following: Let \(K^k\subset M^{m+1}\) be a closed (embedded or immersed) minimal submanifold, \(1\leqslant k\leqslant m-1\), which is nondegenerate in the sense that its Jacobi operator is invertible. There exists an open subset \(I\subset(0,\rho_0)\), which is a countable union of disjoint open intervals, such that for all \(\rho\in I\), the geodesic tube \(\overline S_\rho\) may be perturbated to a constant mean curvature hypersurface \(S_\rho\) with \(H=\frac{n-1}{m}\,\rho^{-1}\).